How it begins again
by aperfectsong
Summary: After the last battle, amid death and new life, life at the Burrow goes on. A story in four chapters and four perspectives. Ginny Weasley, Molly Weasley, George Weasley, and Harry Potter. Post DH, Canon.
1. Lessons in flying

I wrote this last fall for **hg_seasonsfest **on livejournal for **nyladnam04** and am just getting around to posting it now. Does anyone still even read Harry Potter fanfiction out there?

_To live in this world  
__you must be able to do three things:  
__to love what is mortal;  
__to hold it against your bones knowing  
__your own life depends on it;  
__and, when the times comes to let it go,  
__to let it go_

Mary Oliver, "Blackwater Woods"

_Pity you had to see him on a burning day._

Albus Dumbledore

**Chapter 1. Lessons in flying**

Healing begins on a cold September morning some time after the end of everything. A new beginning after the grand fermata of grief.

But it isn't anything sudden. In fact, it's barely a shift. Ginny notices it in pieces. With the windows nudged open and two old patchwork quilts atop her bed, the sensations of warmth and cold are distinct and sharp for the first time in months. She is roused by a birdsong, and with that rousing comes the scent of cinnamon and fig wafting up from the kitchen. It is just the smallest bit easier to pull herself out of bed and step her bare feet down on the groaning floorboards. But that's how she knows.

Above her, the ceiling creaks. Someone's awake. George maybe. Or Harry in Bill and Charlie's old room. But not Ron. He never gets up this early.

Her father and Percy have already gone to work by now, already returned to life, while the rest are still suspended and floating, or drowning maybe, in the pause brought on by the end of the war, so much heavier than the silence that preceded it. The Weasleys, like the rest of the Wizarding World, are torn between celebration and mourning, between promise and the memory of what will always be lost.

In the months since _it_ happened, the long summer, the only September first in modern history where no one has boarded the express train at King's Cross Station, Ginny has watched the world change through blurred eyes.

It took her—and, she imagines, the rest of them—a long time to get used to this life tinged with his absence. Days to get used to the empty seat at the dinner table, weeks to be able to think of the Diagon Alley apartment filled with his things, months to be able to look at George without seeing him there too, somewhere in the shadows. It was even harder to stop thinking of them as _the twins_, a single unit of two souls.

For a while, every day brought on some new lack of him.

His boots out by the shed. He would never wear them again. The sweaters embossed with the letter F, one for every year of his life, some of which had found their way to her armoire for sleep clothes years before. The tables he had leaned tired elbows against. The long sofa he had sprawled across when a Quidditch game came over the wireless. Stairs he had climbed, windows he had looked out of, doors he had passed through. The clock hand that bore his name still pointing confusedly on _Home_. She can't hide the memory of him sitting in _this chair_ or paging through _that book_ any more than she can unravel the threads of his life from her own, anymore than she can undo his existence altogether.

She thought, for a few days, about going to stay with Bill or Charlie, to be without the reminder of him in every corner and every room. But in her sixteen years raised in the house of the brave, she has learned one thing: that running away doesn't solve anything.

Luna wrote to her that keeping a journal might help let things out. But Ginny isn't much of a writer. At least, she hasn't been since the whole thing with the diary. She learned to be careful and to keep herself close. She hasn't picked up a quill ready to bare her soul, or even to transcribe anything other than assignments or letters since she was eleven. She can't bring herself to break that five-year-old resolution, not for fear, but something else she can't explain.

After fixing her hair into a ponytail, slipping a faded jumper over her nightshirt, and grabbing her wand from the teetering nightstand, Ginny pads down the winding staircase. From the landing, she hears voices in the kitchen.

"No, no, no dear," her mother is saying, "You are not intruding. You're part of this family. Don't think that way."

Before he speaks, Ginny knows who her mother is talking to.

"Mrs. Weasley—" Harry begins.

"Not another word on the subject."

His response is too quiet to be heard from the stairs, but she distinctly hears him clear his throat after a minute or so. "Can I at least give you a hand with that?" he asks.

"Of course, dear. You know, I haven't had any of my little ones home for a harvest season in years. I heard from Hermione that some muggle schools have class only during the day and everyone goes home in the afternoon. How nice that must be," her mother is saying.

When Ginny slips unnoticed into the kitchen, Harry is sitting at the table manually whisking a bowl of eggs while her mother bustles around the room, bringing ingredients together in a large bowl.

"Morning," Ginny mumbles and slides into a mismatched chair.

Harry turns reflexively in his seat and smiles at her.

"Oh, Ginny, you're awake," her mother says, wiping her hands on her apron and pulling out her wand. "Tea?" she asks, already levitating three cups and the teapot to the kitchen table.

Both Harry and Ginny hold their cups steady as the teapot dances and squirts tea into them in turn. Mrs. Weasley pours the bowl of eggs into a skillet on the stove and charms a spatula to turn and mix them. From the oven, she removes a freshly baked loaf of bread and begins to slice it.

Her mother continues, "It might be the last week for the apple trees. Do you think you and Harry could take care of that after breakfast? Ron stayed up late talking to Hermione on the _telephone_." She pronounces the foreign word slowly and carefully. "He probably won't get out of bed until after noon and I want to have the apple tarts ready for when everyone gets home. Bill and Fleur and Charlie are coming for dinner."

Then her mother's voice falls to a whisper. "And George went back to the shop today."

Ginny looks up at the clock on the wall. Sure enough, George's hand is settled on _Work_, along with Bill's, Charlie's, Percy's, and her father's while the others all point _Home_.

Different people, even in the same family, handle loss in different ways. Ginny has heard Ron crying, but only in the shower among the half empty bottles of shampoo and musty towels. From her room, she can hear her parents talk and cry together sometimes, if she goes to bed early enough. But it isn't every night, not anymore. Percy sometimes comes to dinner with misty eyes they all pretend not to notice. But George – he hides it well. And probably casts perfect silencing charms.

"I knew something about this morning felt different," Ginny says with a slight smile.

Her mother tuts at her and then says, "It _is_ a beautiful day. But I just worry about him. It'll be his first time back since—"

"He told me he had been looking forward to getting back," Harry said quietly and unobtrusively. "Help take his mind off things. He wanted to reopen tomorrow."

"When did he say all that?" Mrs. Weasley asks. "I never heard a thing about it."

"He hasn't said anything to me either," Ginny chimes in. Then she takes a sip of tea and it burns her tongue slightly. A quick swish of her wand brings the temperate down a few degrees.

"Err," Harry starts. "Last night. While Ron was on the phone, he came up to play Wizard's Chess. "

"Needed to hear from his investor, then?" Ginny manages a smile.

Harry's eyes grow big and he stares into the teacup.

"She's known for months already. Honestly, you've been here long enough now, Harry. Nothing stays secret in this house."

"Ginny, don't tease him," he mother scolds. "Harry, dear, it isn't my place to tell you what to do with your money."

"These are Fred and George we're talking about. They would have found another way if you hadn't supplied them. It just might have taken a while longer."

Ginny pretends not to notice when her mother tenses at the mention of him, at the mention of additional time that might have prevented the operation altogether.

Once, she caught her mother and George crying together beside the fireplace. It might have been the night before the funeral, when everything was still so raw and unreal. She saw George's silent tears, heard her mother's gasps. She couldn't hear what they said, if anything. She just saw them from the side, heads curled forward, an expression on their faces that made her feel like nothing would ever be okay again. That none of it would ever stop. That none of them would ever, for even a second, stop missing Fred with everything they had. It was all she could do to make it up to her room before everything spilled out. Her life now (all of their lives, she supposes) is divided into a strict game of _before_ and _after_. It will be, probably, for the rest of their lives.

Looking at Harry crouched over a bowl of batter, a thought occurs to her. Where was Harry that night? Did he come home with them after the funeral? Everyone else came to stay at the Burrow that first week, to grope through the loss of Fred together. Where else could he have gone? She wonders if he and Ron talked about it or if Harry just listened to him cry from across the room in the middle-of-the-night darkness that seemed to have lasted that first week. He certainly hasn't gathered up enough courage to comfort _her_, not that she allows herself to cry anywhere except behind her locked bedroom door. In a family that shares everything, it is strange that she is allowed to hide away in the privacy of grief, that it isn't another thing she has to share.

Her mother relaxes a moment later, recovered, and places a plate of eggs and a piece of bread in front of both Harry and Ginny. Her mother's resilience continually surprises her. After losing her two older brothers in the first war, one of her sons and dozens of friends in the second, she is still able to gather together what is left of her family and carry them forward.

"Eat up," she chides. "Those apples aren't going to pick themselves."

Outside the leaves have already begun to change. They flitter across the lawn and gather in orange bunches against the side of the house next to the garden spade, watering can, and haphazard pile of Wellington boots.

Ginny leads the way down the beaten garden path, past the mums and Queen Anne's lace, past the few ripe squashes in the vegetable garden. Some of the hens cluck as she passes by and Ginny waves a hand at them. They fuss louder in response.

"You've already eaten," she tells them, exasperatedly.

Harry gives a snort somewhere over her left shoulder. So close she can feel the warm air of his breath. Still, he doesn't touch her, and it's the closest they've been in what seems ages.

He has fallen behind by the time she reaches the shed. Inside, her father's muggle artifacts, a weathered box of Quidditch supplies, the family's broom collection, and a bin full of worn childhood toys sit covered in dust. The bin must have been excluded when her mother scoured the house for toys to bring Teddy and Andromeda. It's obvious why: too old or broken, having survived the seven of them already. She stares at it but sees nothing.

A few long, silent moments later, Harry pokes his head into the shed behind her.

She shakes her head, clearing something, and grabs an old Cleansweep Five for herself and Ron's Cleansweep Eleven for Harry. Her first instinct is to make some joke about the Firebolt having gone the way of George's left ear, but thinks better of it. It's still too soon. Not for Harry. But for her. That was the night it all really began. And she can't think of beginnings without bringing to mind the endings, too, without calling forward a sky full of ghosts.

Harry holds the broom in both hands before handing it back to her. "I'll take one of the older ones. I don't want Ron to—"

"We have a Shooting Star that refuses to go left, and an even older Comet that seems scared to be more than two and a half meters up. I took George's Cleansweep Five to Hogwarts last year and didn't get a chance to get it, since I didn't go back after Easter Hols… I don't know what happened to it. And these old Nimbuses are complete rubbish. No acceleration at all. I'll use Ron's if you don't want to. He's always mad at me anyway."

"These aren't too bad," Harry says, taking the Cleansweep Five from her. It is engraved at the top with the name Fred Weasley. He glances down at it and sucks in air quickly through his nose. "Would you rather I use Ron's?"

"It doesn't matter," she says, but her voice shakes.

"Here," he says, "I'll use Ron's."

Ginny holds Fred's broom in her arms and stares down at it while Harry, watching her, swallows slowly. "Why do we need the brooms anyway? I thought we were picking applies?"

"To reach the top. If you climb, you can't reach the far out branches," she says.

"We can't use wands?"

"No, not for this. We have to leave the stem on the tree, so next year, it'll blossom again. Sometimes magic is imperfect. It can't account for the twist. It would just tear the whole thing off and we have to leave the stem."

"Leave the stem. Alright," Harry repeats, still staring at her.

Ginny pulls the shed door closed with a solemn slowness and the two mount their brooms and ascend into the clear sky.

There hasn't been much of a chance for the two of them to spend time alone, even living, at least temporarily, in the same house.

Harry was Ron's friend first. From the time Ron turned eleven and went off to school, Ginny suddenly became much younger to him than she had always been before: a tag-a-long rather than the companion she had been growing up. Even though they were older now, even though she had found a friend in Hermione, and at one point a boyfriend in Harry, that little nagging feeling that she was unwanted among the three of them refused to be quelled completely.

She has spent most of the extended holiday from Hogwarts hidden away in her bedroom among her old school books, quills and parchment, and the novels from Hermione she never had the time or inclination to read before. Now, time is something she has too much of. She has kept up her summer correspondence. She has even learned to charm knitting needles to make baby clothes for Teddy. She has spent hours staring out the open window of her bedroom, always at the sky, always with longing for a time she can revisit only in memory.

"Ginny?" Harry calls to her. She's lagging behind, and not just because he has the faster broom.

"Sorry," she calls back.

She speeds up and hovers to the side of one of the apple trees. Steadying herself on Fred's broom, she withdraws her wand from the pocket of her jumper and charms two baskets to float next to them. After replacing the wand, she grasps a shiny red apple, twisting it around on its branch until it snaps free, stemless. Then she drops it into the basket. Harry, on the other side of her, repeats her actions.

Despite the October air, the sun is warm on her scalp and neck. After a few minutes, Ginny has to roll the sleeves of her jumper up to the elbows. A light sheen of sweat covers her forehead. She is maneuvering higher, tilting her body to reach an inside branch when Harry speaks.

"You fly well."

Her first instinct is to laugh. Two years on the Gryffindor Quidditch team and Harry Potter compliments her flying skills as she stretches to reach a particularly difficult apple. She plucks it and tosses it at him. Of course, he catches it. Smiling, always smiling now. It unnerves her, just the slightest bit. It's like there's so much life shining out from inside him, she has to look away or close her eyes. It feels impossible for him to be so happy after losing so much.

Around her, the leaves are all golden and sunrise, and in a few weeks, the lawn will be blanketed with them.

"Not right now," Harry says, "That's not how I meant it. I mean, I've seen you take Ron's broom out at night. Bill and Charlie's window has a nice view of the garden."

When she gives no response, only arches her body further into the branches, he continues, "I don't think he knows. Too busy with Hermione's letters."

At this, she smiles and picks another apple. Then she switches to the other tree. Harry follows.

"Odd to be home for harvest season," Ginny says after a few more minutes, and places a bright green apple into her basket. If not for the charm on basket, the apples would have already overflowed. "I haven't been out in the orchard this time of year since I started at Hogwarts. I've really missed it."

"Hogwarts in autumn is beautiful, too," he says. "But this is nice. Peaceful."

"It never used to be. Not with all seven of us running around."

She smiles at a memory that cannot possibly belong to her, probably something forever preserved in a photograph: the slight wind rustling through the branches, Fred and George chasing Percy around the big tree while Bill and Charlie rose above them on broomstick. Ron, still pudgy and baby faced, pushing handfuls of crumpled leaves toward their father. Ginny, a few weeks old, sleeps in her mother's arms. Even Errol, not so gray, is perched on a low-lying limb. It must have been right after Voldemort's first downfall. She sees the war in her mother's eyes – a mixture of pain and relief. She wonders what happened to the picture, if it's still lying around somewhere in the house. She begins thinking through dresser drawers and the box of old photo frames, broken when they twins tried to play Quidditch in the sitting room.

"Gin," Harry says and distracts her from her reverie. "Are you all right?"

She feels the moment slip away. She looks up, startled, and responds, "I'm fine," before she realizes even Harry Potter, the thickest-headed boy who ever lived, can see through it—he can see right through her.

"I just…" he starts. Then he adjusts his glasses and tries again. "I've been here for a few months and I thought we'd have a proper chance to talk. George says you don't talk much to anyone about… what happened… or really anything bothering you, not since your first year. But, I thought…" He pauses. "I guess I just thought you would talk to me."

"Harry, really, I'm fine."

He inhales for a long time.

"No you aren't. You aren't fine, Ginny. How could you be? Fred's… Fred's gone."

At this, she starts to cry, but hides it, turning away from him. She breathes slowly through her nose and blinks away the warm tears. She cannot cry in front of Harry. A little voice inside her keeps repeating it. _Do not cry in front of Harry_.

"You're punishing yourself for it. There was nothing anyone could do. It happened so fast. Suffering for his sake isn't going to bring him back."

At this, she whirls on him, so quickly she nearly upsets the basket of apples. Her face is red and glowing as she says in the harshest way she knows how, "You don't understand! He was my brother. He was one of us. Fred. Fred." By the end of the phrase, her voice has fallen to a whisper and tears are once again rolling down her cheeks.

And Harry is by her side. He touches her shoulder tentatively, but she hides her face from him, even though she can't hide the sounds caught in her throat. "You don't understand," she manages, though it comes out a cross between a sob and a cough. She wipes her eyes and nose on her sleeves.

"You're right. I can't understand, but I know it feels like you have to keep remembering them, every moment, and it has to hurt because they can't, because this is all they have left—you remembering them. So you can't let yourself be happy. You can't let yourself move on from that moment because they never will."

"Stop it!"

"Listen to me, Ginny. Please, listen to me. I saw my parents that night. And Remus, Sirius and Dumbledore, too. I felt it, how they feel. And it doesn't hurt."

She is sobbing in earnest now, in a way she never thought herself capable of. Harry is at her side, lowering them both to the ground, holding her to him. The dry leaves crunch beneath the weight of their bodies. He is solid and warm and soft and smells like she remembers, a scent she can't exactly place, but that reminds her of sweat and soap and autumn.

"It's warm and light, and it's peaceful. It fills them. There is no pain and no sadness. It's all warmth and light. All of it. He doesn't need you to hurt for him."

Around them the wind plucks orange and red leaves from branches, carries them up in a spiral motion before cradling them back down to the earth. Ginny, through tears, sees the leaves in a swirl of autumn colors, then, slowly, turning towards him, focuses on Harry's green irises, bright in the light of the morning sun.


	2. Portrait of a mother after the war

_Chapter 2. Portrait of a mother (after the war)_

Molly Weasley stands alone in the kitchen taking long sips from a lukewarm cup of tea. She is neither tired, nor thirsty, but swallows mouthful after mouthful out of dutiful habit.

She is dressed for a day of homemaking: a long paisley housedress, patched and sewn together where the material became too thin. The dress is covered by a white apron with careful embroidery on its ratted edges. On the front, a long, thin pocket, perfectly at arm's length, houses her wand.

The paint on the ceiling is beginning to peel, she notices between sips. And the windows need scrubbing. Her eyes travel to the sitting room where a pile of soot sits on the carpet in front of the fireplace and Ron-sized footprints track it up the stairs. She sighs. Tea first. She takes a long sip and turns to the window.

Outside, Molly's youngest winds her way down the garden path, more alive than Molly has seen her in months. The thought occurs to her that perhaps she should have given Ginny more to do around the house since she's been home. Then her world-weary seventeen-year-old daughter could have spent less time locked in her room or flitting around the garden at night on broomstick. Less time in spent in silence and solitude.

Taking care of her family was the very thing that snapped Molly back to life again after the funeral. All of her children were home, even Bill and Fleur, even Charlie. She had meals to prepare, a house to keep clean, a garden to tend, shopping to attend to, the comfort of her guests to insure, and a brood of hens whose eggs don't collect themselves. Hardly time to take a deep breath, let alone stew in the despair she kept hidden close to her heart.

Though she couldn't help but be reminded of the days after her own brothers were killed, back during Voldemort's first war, when she had thrown herself into taking care of the children—there were so many young ones about the house then, and her youngest still on the way. Her only daughter – born of all those old sorrows; carried, then set adrift on a sea of worry, fear, and yes, Molly acknowledges, grief. Can something like that be passed on to a child? That understanding of death and loss? Even when she was young, Molly thought she saw it, or imagined it, in her daughter's eyes. As if she not only understood death, but also watched it with dread and defiance as it buzzed around their heads. As if she had been waiting for it, expecting it to strike.

She never witnessed any acknowledgement of it in her twins. Not until death's hand tugged at Fred's collar, dragging his shadow onto the next life. She couldn't make sense of it: it seemed that all her twins' energy, all their joie de vivre should have kept them tethered to this life. It had been Ron and Harry and Arthur she worried most for. The guilt of that realization kept at her those first few weeks.

But she should have known. Death is an indiscriminate foe. There is no such thing as safety in times of war: first her brothers, and now, her son. Her bright-eyed, brave, and beautiful son.

Molly dabs the corners of her eyes with the edge of her apron and washes her empty cup of tea.

They didn't come through unscathed, not any of them. Coming into adulthood right at the time of war, the way she did, the very thing she worked so hard to spare them from. She had never wanted _her _war to become _her children's _war. She would have given nearly anything to prevent it.

She still dreams of her poor lost boy. Only they aren't exactly dreams. More like memories. Early on, she would wake transplanted to the days before the war and for a few sleepy moments, breath easily. But re-memory would come fast and sharp: draining air from her lungs, tears from her eyes. Her son. To know he would never grow older than he had been in that last moment.

She closes her eyes and takes deep breaths. She has a house to clean, vegetables to pick, a meal to prepare, a family to heal and care for. But how long, she wonders, will healing take? How long until they escape this sea of sorrow that war has made of their lives?

Sometimes she forgets the war is really over and that much of the danger has passed. Out of habit, she finds herself watching the family clock with that same worried trepidation. She is still afraid for them. Maybe it is a mark of having survived two wars fought so close to home, both within the same eighteen years, this fear that she will always carry in the hollow of her bones. Is it the same for her children? Do they, like she does, grasp their wands when a loud noise startles them? Or when a door opens too suddenly? Or upon hearing the pop of apparation close by? Do they, too, live their lives in anticipation of the next great danger or tragedy? And will this fear be another thing that slowly trickles away along with the passage of time, like anger, like grief?

Molly withdraws her wand and casts a scourging charm on the table and floor. In the sitting room, she scoops up the soot with an old metal dust pan, and with her apron, wipes Floo Powder from the photographs on the mantel. The carpet takes a little more effort to work clean with the combined power of magic and manual labor. And then, with the opportunity of Ginny being out in the yard, she goes into her room to collect dirty laundry.

Stooping down to pick a pair of socks, she notices a letter under the bed, under siege by a family of dust bunnies looking to make it a home. Molly goes back downstairs for her dustpan and broom and scoops them up.

"Now what are _you_ doing here?" she address the dust bunnies. "Let's get you outside."

They move and jiggle in the pan, but allow her to bring them out the garden door, where she sets them down on the path. "Go on now." They hop away into the bushes.

Molly glances toward the orchard where Ginny and Harry are still picking apples. Their backs are toward her, but Ginny's hair blazes forward in the breeze. From this distance, Molly can make out a few red apples dotting the upper branches.

Back inside, Molly resumes collecting laundry. She climbs the next flight up to Bill and Charlie's old room to collect Harry's from the basket in the corner.

Then she pulls open the door to George's room, setting the laundry basket down in the hallway. She allows her eyes to skim over Fred's bed and dresser. There is a photograph of the twins and Percy in their school robes centered on top of it. Molly allows herself to stare at their young, smiling faces, watches them wave at her for a few moments before she forces herself to turn away. She knows most of his possessions are still at the Diagon Alley apartment none of them can bear to visit, or in the closed trunk at the foot of the bed. She rests her hands on the surface of the dresser and they come away dusty. She sighs. Then she opens one of the drawers. A too-small jumper with an orange-stitched F stares back at her. Another drawer contains mismatched socks and a few t-shirts. She pushes the drawer closed and the brass latch quivers in place.

How can George stand sleeping in the room where they grew up together? All of those memories. The walls are covered completely with posters of Quidditch stars, muggle rock musicians and photographs of the twins with their friends at school: Fred and Angelina Johnson in their formal wear before the ball, George with his arm around Katie Bell on the dance floor. There is a photo of the Gryffindor Quidditch team, back when Oliver Wood was captain and Harry was a first year. Molly can't bring herself to look at the others, to see the two of them together and smiling anymore. She picks up George's pile of laundry and rushes from the room.

Downstairs in the scullery, she fills a large basin and leaves the clothes to soak in soapy water. In the kitchen, she begins a grocery list. She lets thoughts of each item occupy her.

Molly is in the middle of writing _ground ginger_ when the kitchen door opens, startling her. Her quill scrapes upward in a scribble and Ginny rushes into the kitchen red faced with Harry following at her heels.

"The apples?" Molly asks.

Her daughter does not turn, but continues on toward the stairs. Her head is angled downward so that Molly cannot see her face. It seems obvious that her youngest is crying, which even Molly knows is rare. _Something_ happened. Immediately, Molly imagines the worst.

"Are you okay, Ginny? What happened? Is she hurt? Did she fall?" She addresses the last two questions to Harry, as her daughter just continues on up the stairs.

Harry obediently turns around and responds, "She's okay. Just… she's fine."

Then Molly realizes what must have happened. Some sort of argument. Part of her wants to scold Harry for whatever he must have said to make Ginny cry, but some other part wants to thank him for finally getting through the shell Ginny has spent the greater part of her life erecting. There's something about being the youngest child in a big family, and the only girl besides, that brings on the necessity of such a barrier.

Upstairs, Ginny's door clicks closed. Molly knows it's too late for Harry to follow. In that same moment, he seems to realize it as well. He sticks his hands into the pockets of his trousers.

"The apples are outside. I'll go get them," he says.

"Don't worry about it, dear. These two old legs aren't good for nothing yet."

"I'll get them," Harry repeats, more adamantly this time.

So she lets him go, but stands in the doorway looking after him. When he is close enough to the orchard, he skillfully levitates both heavy baskets and brings them into the kitchen.

But after setting them down, he seems at a loss of what to do next.

"How about another cup of tea, Harry?" she asks him, already filling the kettle.

"Thanks." He sits down at the table and runs a hand through his unruly hair.

She feels like she has to say something. So she opens her mouth and lets the words tumble out. "I can't say I completely understand any of my children, or what they're going through right now, Harry. But _that one_, she's always needed an extra shove. It's the Prewett in her. My side of the line is all stubborn and independent."

At this, he smiles, but doesn't say anything.

"Are you doing alright?"

"I'm fine, Mrs. Weasley."

The tea kettle begins its high-pitched whistle and she pours the boiling water over tea into two mugs. Retrieving the sugar from a cabinet, she levitates the cups to the kitchen table and sits down across from Harry.

He reaches for the mug, touching it with a fingertip to test the temperature. He spoons sugar in and swirls it around.

Molly tries not to, but finds herself looking at the lightning bolt scar. A part of her thought it might disappear with Voldemort's death. She doesn't know why she thought that. Physical scars, emotional scars, they never truly heal over completely. Deep inside her, she knows this. She looks away.

"Have you given any thought to what you're going to do after the reconstruction? Are you going back to school?"

He takes a sip.

"I'm not sure. Kingsley seems convinced I could pass the Auror examinations on reputation, but that doesn't seem fair."

A thought occurs to her that nothing so far in Harry Potter's life has been determined by what's fair. But it is not something to voice aloud to the young man.

"I heard that the new Headmistress is planning an accelerated program to make up for the questionable instruction last year. And for the muggle borns who couldn't attend."

Harry nods at this. She is sure he already knows. Probably from the Headmistress herself. Or maybe from the Minister of Magic.

"It would be nice to be at Hogwarts again. How is the rebuilding going?" she asks.

"Seems to be on track. They're on schedule to open right after the New Year."

"I've been dreading it," Molly admits. She removes the tea bag from her mug and sets it down on the saucer.

"Mrs. Weasley?"

"You've all grown so much," she manages, and then looks down at her tea cup. "Maybe George and Percy will stay here for a while. But not forever. Can't keep them forever. It's just so quiet here when everyone is gone to school. Too many empty rooms."

Harry doesn't hazard a reply.

"And I know the war is over and it's safe out there now. But it doesn't stop me from worrying. At least with everyone home, I know they're safe."

"They'll be safe," Harry tells her.

She looks over at him. This boy. She remembers Hagrid carrying his limp and lifeless body up to the entrance of Hogwarts. It was his sacrifice, not her own wand, that saved her daughter's life. It was his sacrifice that saved all of them.

This child. This orphaned child. He is sitting across from her in her kitchen and she feels a glow emanating from him, something she hasn't been able to correctly identify before this moment. This glow of life coming off him radiates toward her. Some kind of raw and untouched magic, older than time. His will to live catches her, mid-breath, and something in her shifts.

"I can't help her," he says. "I can distract her, but that's it. She won't talk to me about it."

"Harry." Molly extends her hand across the table and lays it atop his. While hers is marred by wrinkles and purple veins, his is lined with nameless white scars. The words come to her swiftly and purposefully, as if plucked, ready, from the tree branches outside. "Everyone has to navigate their own path out of despair. You can't just lead her away from it."

A wisp of steam comes off of the hot mug. Molly watches it dissipate and ascend. Harry's response comes slow and Molly can hear in it the history of his own sorrows as plainly as if he were voicing them aloud. "I know," he says. "I know."


	3. Searching for ghosts

_Chapter 3. Searching for ghosts_

It is early morning when George arrives at the shop. The sun is barely visible above the cold London rooftops. An autumnal fog clings to the horizon. The only people on Diagon Alley are the shopkeepers drifting toward the Leaky Cauldron for coffee or tea and biscuits. Across the way, the manager of Flourish and Blotts opens his door with a big key ring while a copy of the Daily Prophet and a steaming cup of tea hover beside him.

George turns back to his own shop door, which has been boarded up since the previous spring. He turns his key in the lock, simultaneously casting a security incantation, and the wooden door creaks open.

He half expects to see Fred there, working among the chaos and disorder as he always did best, but the shop is utterly empty and the silence inside is deafening, even to his good ear.

He turns on the overhead lights and moves around the room. The shelves and display cases are fully-stocked in neat rows. This fact surprises him. When they closed shop at the height of the war, there hadn't been time to do much by way of organization, save pack their trunks and rucksacks and take the money from the register. He puts his hand down on a counter, expecting dust, but it comes away clean.

There's something about having had a twin at his side all his life that leaves George uneasy in solitude.

Someone has been here since they closed. He looks around for a note. Maybe Fred set up some kind of cleaning service. But no, he wouldn't have done that without George knowing. He would have got some kind of bill for that.

Then he hears, or imagines he hears, the sound of Fred laughing.

George freezes. He listens to his own breath coming fast as he withdraws his wand, holding it in front of him.

"Homenum revelio," he says in a whisper.

But no one is there.

His death still feels too close. Days ago rather than months. But the change in the seasons has helped usher in some kind of reality: there will never be another autumn where Fred is alive. It takes longer than it should for George to fully understand it. He has spent far too long plotting the ways this could come off as some terrible prank. And knowing that he would forgive it instantly.

George rubs the thinly bandaged area where his ear used to be and goes to check the stockroom. That side of his head doesn't hurt, not anymore, though the bandage constantly sticks to his hair and it's a nuisance to cover it up when he showers, and sometimes his ear oozes a sticky liquid that isn't quite blood and it has to be cleaned out. Worse that all that is the silence: the blur of life passing by as he picks up only the ghost of conversations and fumbles his way through them. He has grown to hate and fear that silence.

After a few more minutes checking shelves and finding everything in order, George climbs the staircase to look in on the flat, maybe fetch some warmer clothes and the notes from the bank about buying Zonko's. He has planned this trip in his head all summer, and the feelings associated it are more complicated than dread. He's had dreams about it: the apartment acting like some sort of portal to the past, back when they first moved in, with Fred still alive and full of energy. But they are only dreams. George knows he will not find his brother there, but he can't stop the anticipatory feeling that he will find _something_.

The apartment is just the way they left it, only cleaner. The shades are pulled back and the first lights of the morning stream in. From the window, George can see the foggy sky of Muggle London. It's much easier to take in than Fred's shirts and socks and trainers stacked in a pile on the floor.

And he is torn, not for the first time, between preserving everything like a living museum for a dead man, or throwing it all away, and starting over.

The sitting room is furnished with two Gryffindor-red sofas whose tattered appearance suggests that they once, probably decades ago, called the Gryffindor tower home. The apartment itself is sparsely decorated. Unopened boxes sit in the corner by the front door. A stack of paper lies on the kitchen table. A picture of the two of them in their suits on the Grand Opening is pinned onto the wall above the kitchen table with a muggle thumbtack.

How strange it is to think that the last time George set foot in this room, Fred was not only alive, but probably standing beside him. They left through _that_ door together less than a year ago. And now he's back, alone.

George allows the numbness to run over him and brushes away the tears that collect in his eyes. He wonders if he should have taken Bill and Charlie up on their offer to come with. Then there would be three brothers to combat the silence that has taken over and claimed the apartment its kingdom.

His vision blurs again, but he knows this is something he _has _to do on his own, the next step forward after a long summer of stagnation.

So he goes into his bedroom, which is spotless and quiet like the rest of the apartment. Silence is different now. More empty, and more unforgiving. It is a silence that tells him, with every passing second: You are alone. He isn't coming back. The floor creaks as George steps across it and the sound is loud an unexpected, but gives George a rush of something. He opens a dresser drawer and the bronze handle rattles in place. As he fills an old sack with the rest of his clothes, he concentrates on the rustling sounds they make as he stuffs them inside.

He does not enter Fred's room, but closes the door on his way past it.

George had spent most of his childhood wanting his own room. They both had. And now George has a feeling in his bones he can't shake – that maybe this aloneness is retribution for earlier selfishness. And he knows in that instant, he cannot stay here. He cannot return to this apartment with the idea of "home." The only sound in the air is George's own breathing, half heard through his good ear. He returns to the sitting room and again, wishes Bill and Charlie were here with him. Or anyone, really, to shield him with noise: save him from this hell of ghostly footsteps, unheard voices, and his own thoughts reverberating, in silence, through his skill.

In the kitchen he finds the bank documents and brings them back to the couch to have a better look at them.

Then, for something to do, George crosses the room and begins opening the mail that must have collected during his time in hiding, and probably the months after. One letter in particular catches his eye: The familiar handwriting. The blue wax seal of the Order of the Phoenix. The words, "Last Will and Testament," in Fred's effortless script, as if this were just some memo _I'll be home at 12, date with Angie_ or _All out of skiving snackboxes_.

George clutches the letter in shaking hands. He remembers when they each had to write them upon their induction into the Order. How ceremonial it all was. He and Fred had laughed it off. Now, George backs into the sofa and collapses. His eyes are fixated on the envelope in his hands.

In the empty apartment, he is speaking Fred's name before he realizes it, over and over, as if calling his brother, his twin, his other half, back from the dead. He turns the letter over, willing his hands not to shake. Slowly and precisely, he breaks the seal and reads:

_Dear Mum, Dad, Bill, Charlie, Georgie Porgie, Ickle Ronnikins and Ginny, (And o-k, you too, Perce,)_

_In the extremely unlikely event that I don't make it out of my next mission alive, I have a few requests: 1) Please donate my latest Weasley jumper to the fat gnome living behind the shed. Goes by the name of Marv. 2) Divide the money in my Gringotts account up evenly amongst yourselves. 3) Do not, under any circumstances, name any of your children after me. I _will_ haunt them for as long as they live. And if you thought I was unrelenting while alive… _

_Here's to hoping I've gone out in a fit of heroic triumph,_

_Fred _

Following a postscript mark comes a sentence both crossed out and erased. No matter how George holds the paper, under and away from light, tilted to the side, far away or close to his face, he can't make out what it says. And those final unwritten words sink into him like some kind of epitaph for all the goodbyes they never said.

In the quiet of his apartment, George, rereads the letter three more times, each time, stopping at the postscript, as if trying to reach through air and memory for any possible meaning to attach to it. But none comes.

Then his hands curl into fists, crinkling the letter. He doesn't know how long he sits on the sofa with his head in his hands just breathing in and out.

But after some time, a sound rouses him.

He looks up, unsure if he should trust his own hearing. He draws his wand, though, out of habit.

"Fred," he whispers into the empty room, "Can you hear me?"

Silence and a slight buzzing in his good ear are the only response.

He waits a few minutes and the sound comes again. This time, it's a gentle knocking at the front door.

"Hello?" he calls.

"Mr. Weasley? Is that you?" a female voice asks from the other side. "You left the door to the shop unlocked, so I figured you were here early getting things together. I came early to put the banner out, so everyone knows we're re-opening tomorrow."

The voice clicks somewhere in his head. Verity. The assistant he and Fred hired the year before. Verity is early. Curious, probably to see how he is holding up, just like the rest of them.

The letter still in his hand, he gets up from the sofa and opens the door to let her in.

"Good to see you," she says, out of breath, but smiling. "These bloody stairs," she offers by way of explanation. She's wearing the Weasley's Wizard Wheezes uniform and has her blond hair cut even shorter than last time he saw her, trimmed down to just a couple inches. The scar of a long gash runs across her neck and George finds himself wondering where she was during the last battle, trying to remember if he saw her.

"Dungeons," she says, tilting her head to the side to give him a better look. "You should have seen the other guy."

"I'm sorry. Didn't mean to stare."

"It's kind of unavoidable. At least over here, everyone assumes it's a battle wound. Back in Muggle London, most people just think I tried to off myself." She laughs and the rich sound of it echoes in George's head. And the sound of it breaking through the silence feels so good that he has to laugh too.

"Do you know why it's so _clean_ everywhere?"

She tilts her head toward him in an amused manner. "First, you're welcome. Second, there's still a copy of your key under that loose brick in the storeroom. And I have my keys to the store. I just came up a few times to get rid of the trash. Do you know there was a half-eaten biscuit on your kitchen table? It had been there for at least a couple weeks by the time I came by. Didn't want you coming back to a mess, after everything else… How's your ear and everything, by the way?"

He wants to thank her for making this that much easier, but the weight of the letter in his hand keeps him from it.

"Still deaf. Doesn't hurt much though."

"And everything?"

He shrugs and doesn't meet her eyes. Then, for a reason he can't really explain, he hands her the envelope. George stares at the floor, but just makes out the rustle of her removing the letter from it.

After a minute or so, she says, "That's infuriating." Then she is silent for a few seconds. "Bloody hell, I'm sorry Mr. Weasley. Did you just find this?"

He nods.

He doesn't register moving from the doorway until they are seated side by side on the worn sofa, thighs a few inches apart. She smells of cinnamon and coffee. She holds the letter and envelope out to him. When he takes it from her and pockets it, their fingers nearly touch.

"You know, they say laughter drives out ghosts."

"But he's not—"

"Not like that."

George folds his hands in his lap and uses more effort than usually necessary to just breathe. Tentatively, Verity pats his shoulder. A few minutes pass this way, the warmth of her fingers passing through him, the smell of her penetrating the fog of these past few months.

"I don't know if I want to keep them away," he mumbles, but quietly. So quietly that he doesn't hear his own voice aloud. But Verity does.

"I have something serious to tell you, Mr. Weasley." She pauses to allow him to meet her eyes before continuing. They are alive with mirth. "In case you are unaware, you own a joke shop. Are you thinking about renouncing your line of work?"

He shrugs and smiles a little. She's trying too hard to cheer him, but instead of resenting it, he appreciates it. So, he tries make it easier on her. How does the expression go? Fake it until you make it? "George. Just call me George. I'm what? Two years older than you?"

"One."

How did they spend six years in Hogwarts together without him ever noticing her?

"What house were you in?"

"Ravenclaw."

"That explains it, then."

"Explains what?"

"Why I don't remember you from Hogwarts."

"What?"

"You were probably holed up in the library studying ancient runes and arithmancy," he teases, beginning to feel a little more like himself again.

She shrugs. "Fat lot of good it did me."

"What? Your job as a shop assistant doesn't intellectually stimulate you?"

"Let's just say it's just one step on my career path."

"What's the next one?"

"Muggle university."

"Muggle university? That's a new one. What are you going to study there? Time-wasting transportation?"

"I'm taking a few courses already. I'm studying medicine."

"What?"

"I want to study muggle medicine and sort of, combine it with what healers do. I mean, there's a lot of knowledge that hasn't transferred to the magical community. The muggles have been studying the body and the brain and the organ systems. Hogwarts doesn't even offer an intro to human biology course. So, there. Step one, earn enough to pay next term's tuition."

"Maybe one day I'll be able to do something about your ear," she grins, standing up. "Till then, you're just going to have to keep on." She glances down at an _electric_-looking muggle wristwatch. Then she says in a rush, "Hell, it's almost nine. We should get to work."

"Hey Verity," George says, prompting her to turn around. "Thanks for looking after things and cleaning up around here. You didn't have to do that."

"It was nothing," she says and her cheeks tinge pink. "I live just outside Diagon Alley. It was no trouble at all."

"All the same, thank you."


	4. What it's like to be reborn through fire

Chapter 4. _What it's like to be reborn through fire _

Harry Potter sinks further into the worn sofa in the Weasley's sitting room. Then, he learns over the coffee table and tries the motion again with his wand. When nothing happens, he balls his hands into fists and thumps one against the table.

"Where's Hermione when you need her?" he asks. "Can't anyone around here show us how to do it? I'm rubbish at transfiguration."

"Percy's good at everything," Ron says, but adds almost like an afterthought, "Except teaching."

"Is there anything else in here we can do in the meantime?" Harry asks, leafing through the hundred-page NEWT independent study packet Hermione sent to them by owl a few days ago.

"At least we know almost all of the DADA stuff."

Harry flips into another section. "When are we going to need to turn a quill into a platypus? What kind of practical application does that have?" Harry complains.

"We have to take History of Magic, too? I don't even want to think about this today. There's too much here."

"It's so overwhelming."

"Can't we get honorary NEWTs or something? Haven't we earned something for destroying all those ruddy horcruxes?"

At exactly this moment, Ginny appears in the doorway with her hands on her hips. "Oh, Prince Ron," she says in a damsel-in-distress sort of voice, "Too much of a hero to study like the rest of us."

She approaches them and leans over Harry to look through the study packet. Her hair slips out from behind her ear and her small fingers dart out to replace it. Harry catches himself staring.

"I have to study for my NEWTS too, Ron. We're in the same year now. Or will be if Hogwarts ever reopens and they don't let you lot skive off classes."

Harry hadn't yet thought of this. One good reason to finish school instead of just taking the exams – he'd have at least a few of the NEWT level classes with Ginny.

"Are you any good at transfiguration?" he asks her.

"No," she says, without looking at him. Then she backs away. "Ask George when he gets back. Or Bill. He's good at explaining things." Then she leaves the sitting room for the kitchen as swiftly as she entered it. Harry wonders if she's still upset and how long it will take for things between them to get better.

Harry and Ron give up studying a few minutes and begin a game of exploding snap. Harry keeps hoping Ginny will come back and sit with them as they wait for everyone else to get home from work, but she doesn't. In fact, he doesn't manage to see her, let alone talk to her, until everyone arrives and the Burrow is so crowded, it's about ready to burst. The chaos of enlarging the dinner table, conjuring extra chairs from the bedrooms, and greeting everyone prevents Harry from even approaching her.

At dinner, they are seated on opposite corners of the long table. Harry is seated between Ron and Mr. Weasley and Ginny is off to the other side of the table by her mother. His conversation with Ron settles largely on the excitement of George re-opening the shop the following day, and how Ron plans to call Hermione after dinner to ask if she will meet them there.

After everyone has finished eating (except for Ron, who is still shoveling down his third helping of potatoes), Bill clinks his glass in a theatrical way and stands. He is beaming, which makes the scars that line his face crease in a distorted sort of way, but Harry pretends not to notice them.

"We have some big news," he begins. He first allows for a dramatic pause and then looks at Fleur.

She stands up beside him and excitedly blurts out, "We are 'aving a baby!"

The dinner table erupts into noise and cheering. Mrs. Weasley embraces Fleur and begins to cry. When they part, she dabs at her wet eyes with her apron tail. Charlie shakes Bill's hand and pats him on the back. Ginny reaches into her pocket and hands George a few sickles, laughing outrageously. "I was only off by three months," she says with a mock-scowl. George, grinning, pockets the money.

When Mr. Weasley gets out of his seat to embrace his son, the questions start: "When is the baby due?' Ginny asks. Then Ron says loudly, before Fleur can answer, "When do you find out if it's a boy or a girl?" Mr. Weasley, releasing Bill, exclaims loudly, "I think there's some champagne left over from the wedding somewhere in the kitchen." "Oh my dears, my dears," Mrs. Weasley repeats over and over again, "I'm so happy for you both!" "Have you thought about names yet?" George asks. "How long have you known?" Mrs. Weasley asks.

"Wait for Dad to get back," Bill says.

As glasses are conjured and champagne is poured, Bill tells them that the baby is due in May and that they've known for only a week. Fleur's family already knows because she flooed Gabrielle right after she shared the news with Bill. They had been waiting for a time when the whole Weasley family could get together.

As soon as the news is given, it seems to Harry that a fog lifts from the mourning house. The prospect of new life lets something contagious loose in the air: an anticipatory, hopeful feeling. Harry is glad for it. After months of watching the Weasleys battle denial, guilt, depression and longing, and drowning in the fog of their grief, news like this gives him some hope it won't stay that way much longer.

Someone suggests a bonfire to celebrate, but Harry doesn't quite make out who in all the confusion of everyone backing out of their chairs. So, after the toast, (Fleur sips from a glass of water), the party moves out into the garden.

Harry makes his way to Bill to shake his hand and offer his congratulations. Then Fleur embraces him. "Thank you 'Arry!" she says with a bright smile.

The others are busy setting up a fire in the back yard by the time Harry makes it out there. Mr. Weasley has transfigured a rock into a basin for the fire. Charlie, George, and Percy are summoning the few weathered garden chairs they have and arranging them around the makeshift fire pit. They use charms to enlarge a few other rocks and logs for more seats. Mrs. Weasley, in her apron and house slippers, conjures a magical flame, the kind Hermione used during the months they spent hiding out in the wilderness hunting horcruxes. As they arrange themselves in the seats around the fire, Harry tries to maneuver himself to be near Ginny, but he is a little too slow. He ends up sharing a large log with Ron and George, sitting in between them. To Ron's left sits Bill and Fleur in the garden chairs. Ginny is on Fleur's left, next to Charlie and her parents and then Percy. They get situated just as the afternoon sun begins its early descent across the horizon.

Soon they are all lost in the give and take of conversation and the autumnal beauty of the garden. Harry becomes transfixed watching the firelight flicker in Ginny's eyes, so much so that he keeps losing the traces of Ron's conversation. Across the fire, Ginny's eyes crinkle with laughter at something Bill says and Harry wishes he had been sitting closer, so he could laugh with her too. This realization strikes him as pitiful and he turns back to Ron.

"Can you believe Hermione's already a quarter of the way through that packet she made us? She's been studying non-stop, it seems."

"Honestly, Ron. It doesn't surprise me," Harry responds.

"I sent her an owl earlier and she said she can meet us in Diagon Alley tomorrow for the Re-Opening Ceremony. Her parents are coming too."

"Great," Harry says, without any feeling behind it.

It isn't that he's annoyed with Ron or that he doesn't want to see Hermione. It's more that since Ron and Hermione have been spending their evenings talking on the telephone and tea time meeting in quaint shops in muggle London, Harry has begun come to terms with that aspect of his two best friends' lives. And what's more, he understands completely: they've been given a reprieve of sorts, having survived all they all survived, and they're making use of time they thought they wouldn't have.

So when Ron spends his Hermione-less evenings talking about her to anyone with ears to listen (including George with his one), Harry cuts him some slack. And as strange as it is to hear Ron go on about Hermione, the way she smells, how soft she is, how much he enjoys kissing her, how smart she is, Harry listens. He listens even after everyone else in the house has become fed up.

When Harry thinks back to his walk with his parents through the forbidden forest—his walk towards death—he remembers the feelings that came with it: regret that his time was over, sorrow that he wouldn't see any of his friends or Ginny again, have a family or grow old, the dull pain of acceptance deep in his chest. It still tinges occasionally. Only now, he feels it for his parents. He feels it for Sirius and Remus and Tonks, and for Fred. All their lives were stolen out from them before they had the chance to really live them.

That's how he finds himself staring at Ginny from across the fire and nodding politely to whatever Ron is telling him about Hermione's plans for the future and the things they're going to do together now that the war is over. Even when Harry gets smoke in his eyes and removes his glasses to rub them, he is still focused on Ginny's presence: the warm blur of her across the fire.

"They're finally repaired the tracks leading to the most secure accounts," Bill is saying to Ron, Percy and George. Fleur leans her head against his shoulder and squeezes his hand as she talks quietly to Ginny.

"You should hear the sorts of complains we've been getting – how unprofessional it is for the most privileged wizards not to be able to access their safely deposits. I heard one story about a wizard who had deposited a diamond ring back in April. He intended to propose in June and was just able to get the ring out last week."

"But haven't people read The Daily Prophet or the Quibbler's account of what happened?" Ron asks. "Or heard that we only broke in so we could defeat Voldemort? Or have they already forgotten about him? Bunch of gits."

"Their complaints aren't so much about the destruction," Bill goes on, "But about the slow pace of the reconstruction. The break-in has caused the goblins to distrust wizards even more. They won't even let wizards help with the rebuilding. Never were too good at construction spells either, goblins."

"Seems like you pushed wizard-goblin relations back a couple hundred years. Between you lot breaking into Gringotts and Neville pulling Gryffindor's sword out of the hat," George interjects.

"Don't say that around Hermione," Ron says.

"Still going on about SPEW, is she?" George asks with a sly smile.

"She wants to work in the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures."

"Power to her," says Mrs. Weasley over the fire.

"What about you, Ronald? Any thoughts on what you're going to do?" Percy asks in his stringy voice.

Ron reaches over across Harry and nudges George.

"Need an assistant?" Ron asks, only half jokingly.

"Already have one. You remember Verity."

"But I'm your brother."

"All the more reason not to hire you," George says. "Besides, I thought you were going to become an auror with Harry."

"But… we'll have to go back to school for that," he mutters, trailing off.

"Oi, Harry, are you still going to be an auror?"

"Err," he starts. "If I get past training, I suppose."

When Charlie gets up to grab a case of butterbeer from the kitchen and Mrs. Weasley goes to fetch the apple tarts, Harry moves to the open seat next to Ginny.

"Hey," he says to her as he sitting down.

"Hey," she says back. Her cheeks are pink from the warmth of the fire. She has her sneakered feet balanced against a log lining the fire pit, so close that Harry wouldn't be surprised if her shoes had already begun to melt.

Mrs. Weasley comes out from the kitchen soon after with a magically-enhanced tray full of apple tarts.

"Oh, Mrs. Weezley, you did not 'ave to go though all zee trouble."

"Don't thank me," Mrs. Weasley replies. "Ginny and Harry had the harder job of picking the apple trees. It took them a few hours. I just threw these into the oven."

"Zank you very much. They are lovely."

As they all eat, all Harry can hear is Ron's chewing, the sound of the crackling fire, and the gradual chirping of nearby crickets. The air is calm and peaceful, though it carries in its breeze a hint of the winter chill ahead.

In the relative silence, Harry feels the thought going through the minds of each of the Weasleys in turn: if only Fred were here, this evening would be perfect.

Ron breaks the silence. "Maybe it would have been easier if Hogwarts _had_ reopened in September. Would've felt more normal."

No one responds right away.

Then Mrs. Weasley says, "It won't ever be the same."

They get like this sometimes and Harry usually tries to find shadows to inhabit to escape. It's moments like these where he really feels like an outsider among them. He looks up and Fleur and finds that she is looking back at him with understanding in her bright blue eyes. They both stay silent.

"Way to be a downer, Ron," Ginny says pointedly.

George lowers his head. It's obvious that the others are trying hard not to look at him, as if he were something fragile and afraid, something that would run away if spotted. Harry, too, tries not to watch him too closely.

"Is that the signal that it's time to call it a night?" Mr. Weasley asks. "We all have an early morning tomorrow."

He and Mrs. Weasley say their goodbyes and head back to bed. "Don't forget to put out that fire," she calls from the kitchen.

The others sit a while longer by the fireside, talking again of the baby. It is nearly midnight when Bill and Fleur stand to leave and take the Floo back to Shell Cottage. Ginny follows them inside. After putting out the fire, Charlie apparates home and Percy goes up to bed.

"I think I'll call Hermione to say goodnight," Ron says. "Are you heading to bed too, Harry?"

"In a bit."

Harry and George sit quietly beside the burnt-out ashes. Though the fire has been put out, the logs Mr. Weasley had conjured give off a slight warmth and the air still smells of smoke and burning leaves.

George pulls a folded piece of parchment from the pocket of his pants. After turning it over in his hands a few times, he slowly holds it out to the fire. The flames lick at its surface, turning the edge to black ash in his hand. George holds onto the paper as long as it's possible without burning himself. When he lets it go, it drifts down to the flames and Harry just makes out the melting blue seal of the Order. He keeps his eyes on the fire until the paper has completely disintegrated. Then he looks up at George, who lets out a sigh and stands up as if to say, that's the end of that. He meets Harry's eyes with an unreadable expression but Harry recognizes the resignation behind it. He doesn't ask what the paper was.

"Night, Harry," George says.

"Night."

Harry stays out in the night air, waiting for Ginny. She always flies before bed. It must relax her. Let her escape herself for a while. Clear her mind. So, Harry sits beside the fire pit and waits.

The season's last elusive fireflies light up in the air around him and the fire's warm ashes grow steadily cold. He watches the night sky. There's a crispness to the air as it moves through the darkened trees. The slight rustle it makes among the leaves tells Harry that time is still moving forward; and precious though these moments are, they are his to waste or spend freely.

The thought hits him then, that today is a burning day.

The end of something, and the beginning of something else. It isn't just the shift into autumn, though that's part of it. A day with a new feeling about it. A burning day.

The idea is still twisting in his mind a few minutes later, when Ginny opens the door to the back garden slowly and quietly, as if she has become an expert in avoiding its creaks though out the years. She closes it behind her just as noiselessly and turns around.

"Ginny," Harry whispers, and moves slightly so as not to surprise her and catch her off guard.

It doesn't work. She gasps and whips out her wand, aiming it at Harry's chest mercilessly.

"It's me. Harry," he manages to get out before whatever hex she is considering leaves her mouth.

"Merlin, Harry. Don't do that! I thought you were… a death eater or something."

"A death eater?" he asks, incredulously. It has been months since the last of the suspected death eaters have been caught, tried, and sent to Azkaban.

"An escaped death eater, then."

"Sorry," he whispers. "I didn't mean to startle you."

"What are you doing creeping around out here in the dark, anyway?"

"To be honest… I was waiting for you. I know you like to fly before going to bed and I thought you might let me join you. And apologize for earlier."

"You don't have to apologize. Really," she says. "I was being… maybe just a little unreasonable. I was thinking about what you said and, you know what? I think you're right, at least a little bit. I have been sort of ignoring you. And not completely on accident."

Harry had expected it to be easy with her. He had imagined they would fall back together effortlessly. That she might have reached for his hand at one of the funerals, or ran into his arms after the last battle, or pulled him into her room and kissed him like she did on his birthday the year before. He had been thinking and dreaming of that kiss for a long time. The way she felt so soft and warm in his arms, the flower-scent of her hair. But mostly he remembers how it felt having her mouth opened to his like that. His face grows red now, as he remembers the sensations she made him feel that summer day. He is glad then, for the night sky to hide behind.

For the second time that day, Harry follows Ginny down the garden path to the broom shed. She retrieves the brooms much quicker this time and mounts hers (Fred's) without getting that distant and sullen look in her eyes. Her hair catches the light of the moon, glowing red. Harry once again is transfixed by her, by the person she has become, strong and whole and honest.

They take off into the night like two shooting stars, past the orchard and the swamp, higher into the cold air.

He can see the occasional glimmer of Ginny in the light of the crescent moon as she flies ahead of him. Harry relaxes and breathes in the autumn air, slowing and watching her as she glides through the trees. They are out past the orchard now, near the end of the property, and Ginny is practicing dives and ascents and letting the night sky blow through her hair.

There's something about a clear night like this that makes Harry think anything is possible.

So, a half hour later, after they have once again touched ground and are walking toward the broom shed, Harry grabs her hand. The night air has turned it cold and dry, but he slips his fingers in between hers and squeezes slowly.

"Ginny," he says.

She stops walking and turns to face him. She is smiling, but confused.

"I wanted to talk to you all day. I … I didn't mean to push you. If you don't want to talk about," he swallows, "it." He takes a deep breath and pushes on, "That's fine. I—"

"Harry," she says inexplicably.

"Please listen. I just… I have to get this out: I'm sorry for breaking up with you, and for leaving and not writing. But I want you to know that I thought of you every day. I watched your dot on the map all the way up until you left Hogwarts. You were the last thing I thought of before I fell asleep and before Voldemort…" he swallows again, not wanting to think about how much it hurt when he thought he was seeing her for the last time, but not being able to get it out of his mind. His throat tightens and he can't go on.

Ginny moves toward him in the dark and wraps her arms around him. She rests her face in the crook of his neck, her skin cold and chapped from the wind. He puts his arms around her, holding her to him and regains his courage.

Harry leans forward and kisses her. Her nose is cold and wet and presses into his like an icicle. But the warmth of her lips and the familiarity of her comes back to him. Maybe it's that so much time has passed since he lat felt her lips on his, but every nerve in his body seems to be on fire. He can't stop himself from pressing his body against hers.

She laughs. Or, something like a laugh escapes her. She presses back, causing Harry to inhale sharply, and then she shoves him away playfully.

"Harry," she says in a tone that manages to be both admonishing and mischievous at the same time.

"Ginny," he returns, entreatingly. His hands reach her hips and pull her towards him. And when he finds her lips again in the dark, she doesn't protest, but kisses him back with the same intensity.

The leaves crunch under their feet and the scent of fire reaches him. It's on her clothes, in her hair, on her skin. They stay that way for a long time, pressed together in the light of the moon, as time turns over another burning day.


End file.
